Moon Village Association: Going to the Moon with cooperation from the private sector

Moon Village Association: Going to the Moon with cooperation from the private sector

Many countries including China, Russia, South Korea, India, Japan, and Europe Nations have all outlined significant lunar plans. To mention a few, the Moon Village concept got an endorsement from the Secretary General of the China National Space Administration, Yulong Tian. He outlined plans for a series of robotic missions to the moon, including China’s first sample return mission, Chang-e. The Director General of the Russian state space corporation, Roscosmos, talked about participating in any Moon Village effort. Smaller space agencies, such as Ukraine, share a similar desire to carry out lunar missions. President Trump signed the Space Policy Directive-1 in December 2017 and NASA has big plans for the Moon, with the recent Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) initiative. Space activities are not limited to government initiatives; many of them are being pursued in partnership with civil society and the private sector. Several private missions to the Moon are planned in Japan with ispace, India with Team Indus, Israel with SpaceIL, United States with companies such as OffWorld and Moon Express, Germany with PT Scientists, and Luxembourg with CisLunar Industries.

Private industry is developing business plans to profit by creating new services and products that eventually will become the Moon Market. There is already good cooperation between private and government industries in each country; however, there is no global platform allowing cooperation between industry and government around the world. There is also a need to engage non-space industries by communicating the potential of the Moon Market. The Moon Village Association (MVA), a non-governmental organization (NGO) created in 2017 and based in Vienna, is dedicated to this mission:

“Itprovides a forum for the development of the Moon Village for industry, government, space agencies, international organizations, NGOs and the public at large.”

“MVA serves as a catalyst stimulating a virtuous cycle of investments for the development of a lunar economy aiming to settle humankind on the Moon as well as cultural inspiration for future generations.”

The MVA is convinced that it is time to establish a new type of initiative for forward-looking cooperation that can drive to cooperation on the Moon. The most important point to remember is that the MVA is organized around three main pillars: Working Groups, Global Network, and Moon Market, all which present an opportunity. Reading the following detailed information you will be able to identify, evaluate, and precisely understand the growth opportunities for the space industry.

Pillar I: Global Network – Global networking for your business

MVA cooperation includes the establishment of a Global network. The Global network includes all regional and national networks and allows for the technological support and exchange between members in different countries. The MVA Regional Coordinators are the voice of the MVA in each region, especially as activities and excitement for the Moon Village expand around the world. At the moment, MVA is present in North and South America, China, Australia, Russia, Cyprus, Hungary, Italy, and United Kingdom. MVA is looking for active leaders around the world to become the MVA Regional Coordinators.

Pillar II: Working groups – Studies and technologies to foster your business

International and commercial collaborations are critical for getting back to the Moon permanently and developing the Lunar economy. MVA is gathering industry, government, space agencies, international organizations, NGOs, and the public at large in a single forum. The working groups are established to support coordination of MVA members’ efforts in priority areas (10 areas discussed in the working groups). MVA will also be involved in the monitoring efforts and developing studies in the respective areas.Hence, the MVA working groups won’t be running out of work anytime soon. Below find the working groups where you could be involved, either as a participant, lead, or co-lead.

Pillar III: Moon Market

Nowadays the topic of Moon exploration and utilization is on everybody’s lips and the world space community is building plans and undertaking concrete steps to seize the emerging opportunity. The creation of the Moon Market technologies, goods, and services is a subject of the coming years. In fact, some elements of it are already being shaped.Indeed, inspired by Google LunarX Prize earlier as well as by some recent national initiatives, several companies throughout the world are expected to offer payload delivery services by sending their landers to the Moon surface starting as early as the end of 2018. One can easily imagine that this will be followed by services in the fields of communications, navigation, energy supply, prospecting and extracting technologies, storage facilities, in-situ production facilities, scientific instruments, etc.In this exciting time, different businesses worldwide – space and non-space, startups and well established companies – are weighing their options in entering this new, multifaceted, and potentially multi-billion dollar market. To take an informed decision, they need to find answers, in particular, to the following important questions:

What is the Moon Market about?What are “rules of the game” and how can I influence them?What is my potential niche and how can I succeed?

The MVA is here to help address these challenging issues, since the association is planning to be a major enabler of the Moon Market creation! For this, the MVA has a set of instruments to offer its institutional members.First and foremost, it is an international expert environment that provides the members with a direct connection to all the major players worldwide – agencies, companies, think tanks, scientists, venture capitalists, etc. This connection provides “first hand” information about the ongoing and planned programs and projects, enables discussion about different approaches to and understanding of the Moon Market development process, and establishes partnerships in pursuing mutually appealing goals.As of today, the MVA already has a dozen institutional members from big “animals” like Lockheed Martin and Yuzhnoye Design Office, to startups like Team Indus, ispace, OffWorld, PTScientists or CisLunar Industries, from Lunar landing sites protection advocacy, For All MoonKind, to Colorado School of Mines and Skydmore, Merrill & Owings, one of the largest and most influential architecture, interior design, engineering, and urban planning firms in the world.

This diversity of stakeholders is one of the biggest assets of the MVA and one of the most attractive features for future newcomers. All institutional members see perspectives of their business development on the Moon and/or in the cislunar environment.This diversity is partly due to the unique MVA platform’s goal to impact the Moon-related agendas of decision-makers and to lobby its own interests in critically important areas – Moon Village architecture, standards, economic issues, coordination, and partnership. To make this possible, a crucial role is played by the MVA working groups described above; the institutional members have opportunity to propose, contribute to, and even lead MVA working groups, studies, and other key initiatives helping to form the nascent Moon Market.

One of such initiatives is being implemented right now. The NewSpace 2060 International Competition aims at finding original ideas, from professionals and general public alike, related to the creation of the Moon Village and contributing to the formation of the NewSpace ecosystem. The competition was launched on June 18, 2018 in the frame of the UNISPACE50+ event in Vienna and recently took a new twist with additional features and sponsors. It will finish on the last day of the International Astronautical Congress 2018 in Bremen (1-5 October, 2018), thus presenting an excellent opportunity, especially for entrepreneurs and startups with forward-looking approach and creative imagination.

Another event, The 2nd International Moon Village Workshop & Symposium, will take place on November 4-5, 2018 in Southern California. This workshop, being organized by the Moon Village Association (MVA), in cooperation with the University of Southern California (USC) and the National Space Society (NSS) will take place near the USC campus on Sunday, November 4, 2018 and Monday, November 5, 2018, immediately following the NSS Space Settlement Summit (November 2-3, 2018), and concurrently with a planned space business event at USC. During the Moon Village Workshop & Symposium, the MVA – working with diverse leaders from around the globe – will lay out the results of its first year of work and make plans for how best to advance the goals of humanity with regard to the exploration, development, and settlement of the Moon and cislunar space. The 2-day program will comprise of both sessions featuring leading lunar industrialists, technologists, scientists, and visionaries, as well as breakout sessions, organized according to the ten (10) MVA working groups at which real progress will be made in developing strategies and plans for humanity’s lunar future.

All in all, the MVA is facilitating extension of business to the Moon – and from this perspective any entrepreneur or company interested in the subject are kindly invited to join us in this Lunar endeavor.

The Astropreneurs kindly thank Giuseppe Reibaldi, President of MVA and Oleg Ventskovsky, Moon Market Development Manager for providing key information for this post. For more information on the MVA and its activities, please get in touch with Emeline De Antonio, emeline.deantonio@moonvillageassociation.org